How do you choose which self-published works to read?

[neilmarr]

PoD of raw ms?

Sorry, Superlucky: Print on Demand version of author's original, unedited and unproofed manuscript draft. As Hemingway famolusly said: "The first draft of anything is shit."

Cheers. Neil

[mores]

Originally Posted by neilmarr

It's tough because the market (especially the direct-to-ebook market) is becoming top heavy with self-published work and it's so hit and miss, so suck-it-and-see, that you can waste a heck of a lot of precious time and money before finding something worth the read.

Add to that non-existent reader review systems as well as censorship - write a non-favorable review and it's "lost", somehow. Like Books on Board, for example.

[nomesque]

Maybe you could devote a day every month or so to reading the first chapter of a few self-published books? In my experience, the first chapter won't necessarily tell you whether a book will be a gem, but it will generally tell you whether to run screaming from it :-)

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by mores

Add to that non-existent reader review systems as well as censorship - write a non-favorable review and it's "lost", somehow. Like Books on Board, for example.

Interesting....

[ficbot]

I have emailed Fictionwise many times about allowing reader reviews, and they are not interested. This is why I started my own blog...

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by nomesque

Maybe you could devote a day every month or so to reading the first chapter of a few self-published books? In my experience, the first chapter won't necessarily tell you whether a book will be a gem, but it will generally tell you whether to run screaming from it :-)

I second this. Besides recommendations, reading excerpts is the next best way of gauging whether or not you want to read a book. Some of them may sound fascinating, but a perusal of the first chapter will often tell you whether or not the writing is up to snuff.

It was based on such recommendations that I put excerpts of all of my novels on my site, and it seems have paid off: Few people express regret at buying my books, so the excerpts must give them a good idea of what they're getting.

[neilmarr]

Agreed, Steve. Extracts are a real bonus to the browser (I bought your latest on the strength of having read an extract, for instance). My own small indie publishing house always offers about 1,000 words of extract or a full chapter (often the first) as a taster and makes it available all over the place, and -- from feedback we've had over the years -- it's clear that readers appreciate being able to sample before buying. Especially when what you have on offer is from an author who isn't necessarily a household name, it's asking a bit much of a prospective reader to buy a pig in a poke. Reading a novel does not only mean laying out a few bucks ... it involves the investment of several hours' precious reading time. Cheers. Neil

[Xenophon]

Not sure whether or not this has been mentioned before, but...

Baen puts up the first 25% of every book as a free sample. Even when it's a collection of shorter stories some of which are thus presented in full. It's worked well for them for over a decade now.

Xenophon

[kennyc]

Yep. I was just mentioning this excerpt thing (not Baen specifically) over in the B&N Nook thread.

[chlorine]

Thanks for the answer (and sorry for the delay, I've done little else besides working and sleeping for almost two weeks).

The idea of sampling a chapter or two to see if I like a book is interesting, but I don't know if it's the right thing for me. In many ways this discussion reminded me of the thread here about finishing books or not. Though I do not have much trouble in dropping a book that doesn't interest me, I'm picky about which books I read, and I start each book with the expectation that I will like it.
I'm not sure I'd be very comfortable in starting books just to see whether I would like them or not.
Another thing that I'm trying to do instead is to try and read short-stories written by authors of novels that look interesting. Even though it's not a sure sign that I'll enjoy the novel, I feel more comfortable judging the author's style by reading a whole short-story than reading only one chapter of a novel.

Off-topic:
another thing that reminds me of the discussion about whether to finish a book or not is the importance of recommandations. Neilmarr, personnally I'd be much more likely to go on with a book if I found the first chapter awful if some people had told me it was worth it than if I had no outside opinion on this book.

[neilmarr]

You're right, of course, Chlorine: peer recommendation and good review are the very best guide. Thing is, of course, that the ball has to start rolling before there's anyone to recommend or review a book; hence the importance of tasters. N

[MichaelFStewart]

Personally I use reviews and description to judge what to pick up. On the self pubbed side, most are in the $2.00 or less range, so not a big investment. And I look for credible reviews. If it's the persons first review, I disregard. If they've reviewed all of the authors books and nothing else. I disregard. If it's over the top, I disregard. In fact, I usually don't waste my time if I can tell there appear to be a whiff of fluff reviews.

Can I ask a question of you Neil? As a publisher, how can you offer books so inexpensively? Or do you find that the volume at 2.00 a book makes up for the margin at $5.00-10?

Having self pubbed myself (Jack Stewart, The Caliphate) - I truly believe there are good books out there that didn't find a home.

[BearMountainBooks]

Since I'm self-published, I started reading more of the same, usually from smashwords, but that is just because my books are there. What I found works for me is sampling because you are right--there are HORDES of books available and the quality ranges. Then too, some books that I think will be TOTALLY my thing...aren't after just a few pages.

I like that the Indie books are cheap. I like the instant buying...and I like the sampling!

But I also do read based on recommendations, either from this site or from kindleboards.com where I wander around a lot. I'd say that the best of them come from recommendations (which I try to do myself when I come across something that I really like.)

Maria

[BearMountainBooks]

I guess I should also mention that there's a blog that does mostly reviews of self-published works--I've used that before as well. She does her reviews on the blog and also posts them to Amazon and they're pretty informative.

http://redadept.wordpress.com/

[neilmarr]

***Can I ask a question of you Neil? As a publisher, how can you offer books so inexpensively?***

Hi, Michael. We started to offer digital versions of our paperbacks when we launched in 2002. At the time, ebook reading was so rare -- and mostly on PC or laptop screens -- that we looked upon them as promotional tools. Invariably, a reader would get tired of reading at the desk, unable to take his PC to bed, and come back for the paperback. Low prices and freebies made sense.

Also, those low prices apply only to our own store, other retailers charge much more for our ebooks; so our prices might encourage people to opt for the BeWrite Books shop for ebooks and paperbacks. We don't charge ourselves sales commission, of course, so all royalties (author/editor/artist/designer) remain at optimum when books are bought direct from us.

We only offer PDF so far, but we plan to convert all titles to other formats next year. We might well have to hire in extra tech help for this, so there might be an increase in ebook cover price at our store ... but we're determined that any hike will be a small one.

What profit we make so far comes from paperback sales. All the expensive editorial, design, technical and promotional work goes into those treebooks. The ebook is almost a by-product. So, until ebook sales look set to heavily impact treebook sales, we see no excuse for high prices. Right from the start, we've wanted to promote the idea of ereading rather than cash in on it: which is why anyone here can email me for freebies.

Cheers. Neil